Anti-cheat update: Striking down on stats padding and how you can help

We want everyone to play a fair game. Read on for how we are further increasing our anti-cheat measures for Battlefield 3, including striking down on stats padding and improving cheater reporting.

Let’s talk stats padding. Stats padding is when you stop playing the game and start finding ways to artificially leverage your score. So instead of actually trying to win a game of Conquest, a stats padder might run his or her own server and enforce a house rule that no killing is allowed. This lets everyone simply run around and capture flags, leading to a skewed progression.

Therefore, we aim to reduce stats padding as much as possible. One way we are doing this is by continuously striking down on servers run with the sole purpose of artificially boosting players’ stats. When we find stats padding servers, we reach out to the renters and ask them to change their settings, otherwise placing their servers in an “Unranked” state (where any gained persistence will not be recognized in players’ online progression, thus rendering the server harmless).

How you can help report suspected cheaters
In other anti-cheat news, you may have seen that we have improved how you can report potential cheaters in Battlelog. If you encounter a possible cheater in the game, the best way to make us aware and is by finding the player’s profile on Battlelog. From there, click the little triangle in the top right of the player’s profile page and select the new option “Report possible cheat”.

Step 1. Click the triangle and click ”Report possible cheat” in a player’s Battlelog profile if you suspect that person might be cheating.

This brings up a new window where you can select the player’s soldier in question (if the player has several), enter the type of incident, enter a description of what happened, and finally link to a Battle Report (optional). Please be as detailed as you can to help us zoom in on how a player might have cheated. Your reports will go straight to the inbox of our dedicated anti cheat squad here at DICE. From there, they will manually check the player in question and take appropriate action.

Enjoy the game, and thanks for your help!

Step 2. Enter as much concrete information as you can and link to any relevant Battle Report to help us follow up on potential cheaters.